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Tuesday, May 4, 2010

official endorsement

ok, not that the fine folks at scholastic care, but I am officially endorsing two set of phonic early readers from them. I'm a long time scholastic shopper, sometimes obsessive shopper. You know them, they supply the send home school order forms for books. I did a pretty good job this year with Bee getting the forms, only ordering books we really wanted.

Recently, I ordered two sets of phonic early readers, one Clifford, one Biscuit. I have never liked phonic early readers. They are fine for reading words, but they are void of any plot and it's not possible to ask questions about what has just been read. I've been searching for something better.

Both of these sets of books are well labeled as to the phonic skill practiced (short a, sh blend, etc). By using a few larger words, namely the characters names, it really allows for an actual plot. The pictures are the familiar ones that go with the full length books and are excellent for using for picture clues.

This is the summer for reading at out house. I think Bee is so close to putting some skills together and getting it. Until now, we have primarily been working on word families. She can read the words in families since she knows the first letter sound and can apply the different sounds to the rest of the words in the whole family. When they are in context, like in a story, she can't get them. I am thinking these books will help with this.

Also, something new is our focus on these popcorn words. I used Fry's list of high frequency words. 24% of all written material is composed of the first 10 words (the, of, and, a to, in, is, you that, it) and 50% is the 100 words. We went with the first 25 for right now. (the of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it, he, was, for, on, are, as, with, his, they, I, at, be, this, have, from).

The first night, we put them on the floor in a trail and jumped (like popcorn kernels) and read them. I am thinking that we'll need to focus on 5 or so at a time. I was thinking after she could read all 25 we would have a popcorn party, but eat popcorn all the time. Maybe, we'll make some special popcorn balls or make caramel popcorn. Now that would be a treat.

Edited to add: I meant to add this video. Bee is reading her new book.